Epson V800 holders : harnessing the collective knowledge

I have an Espon V800 with a rather simple scanning process: I scan contact sheets and only the images I like the most (mostly medium format). Yet I found the V800 holders to be somewhat difficult to use, they attract dust like teenagers on a porn site and their limits have been underlined by many.

What would be the "best" alternative to these holders to obtain the most out of the V800 with ease of use?

List of options seen around the web:

• original holders: they create some sort of “color aberrations” noted by filmscanner.info;
• epson holders without the plastic ANR: problem with flatness (notably medium format?)
• “dry” scanning with the fluid mount accessory and ANR glass on top: Newton ring problem?
• Betterscanning holders with T-locks: out of business? (best solution?)
• Digitaliza: some say it scratches the negatives (but sounds good with appropriate shims);
• negative on glass + ANR glass on top: you loose the advantages of the high res lens;
• sandwich the negative between two ANR glass with shims: best solution?
• wet scanning… At that point, I would pay for drum scan!
• other solutions that I have missed?

I now surrender to the collective knowledge…

Thanks in advance to all your inputs.

Papineau

There are many here to help you and they will answer soon, I am sure. Meanwhile

I posted this earlier, but this is my ditty, and I'm stickin' to it.
I bought a new V850Pro last year and kept testing the film holders, wishing (like others) that the 6x6 one would hold 4 frames. I found the best settings for the leveling feet, different on different size holders (I have 35mm, 6x6, and 4x5 film to scan, all B&W). I also tried scanning directly on the glass (e-down) with ANR glass on top. With none of these options do I use the sharpening function of the software (Silverfast).
I’ve been scanning for 25 years or so, with all kinds of scanners, some professionally, and arrived at the feeling that I might not be getting the best scan sharpness. The film holders are inconsistent and kind of tinkertoy. I could not make contact with the BetterScanning guy (he still doesn’t list the 850 on his site), so I contacted another anr glass guy whose site is Scan-Tech, who sells glass and will talk to you. I bought a piece of glass 8x10 and decided to shim it up from the scanner glass and reach the height of best sharpness.
I did this with 2 feeler gauge sets I bought on line, cheap. I took them apart, cleaned off the oil, and started at just under 3mm in height (approximately where the film sits with a holder), using the various gauges in combinations, two equal stacks, one on either edge of the glass, with the neg (a good grain-sturdy tri-x and rodinal neg from the 70s) with the neg in between the stacks. The neg is taped base side to the anr glass in the sprocket hole areas. The natural curve keeps it flat to the glass. (This also works with 4x5 and 6x6mm)
I found the height of 3.25mm was best (all measurements were confirmed with a micrometer, purchased with the feeler gauges), and that from 3.15 - 3.35 was a decent range, but 3.25 is the sharpest. It is also sharper than scanning on the glass itself. And, what’s nice - the height is the same for all formats. I made permanent spacers using 3/4” wide .0625” thick extruded aluminum strips from a hardware store, 10” long, binding up with pieces of a high quality dense digital paper stock, reaching the right thickness, including the blue painters’ tape that binds it all together. (the same tape used to hold the neg to the glass - no residue.) I place a spacer on either side of the scanner glass, 8” apart, so I can scan anything in between, format is irrelevant, and I can mount 2 4x5 negs for scanning (holder holds only one), and 4 6x6cm negs.
My approach to scanning is one image at a time, like printing in the darkroom, so I’m not looking for rapid multi frame scanning of rolls of film, but rather the best scan I can get. (Everything is black and white). I scan to tiffs, 16 bit, open in Raw from the bridge (I like the way it sharpens, much nicer than in PShop), open and work in PShop the rest of the way. On extreme dynamic range images, I do a second scan of highlight or shadow areas, paste in over the other scan in PShop and mask out what I don’t want from the second, although the Silverfast double scan feature for shadow areas does a great job most of the time.
Opening the tiff scan in Raw allows me to tweak the ends of the range by opening up the shadows or compressing the highlights before opening in PShop for final editing.

Papineau said:

I have an Espon V800 with a rather simple scanning process: I scan contact sheets and only the images I like the most (mostly medium format). Yet I found the V800 holders to be somewhat difficult to use, they attract dust like teenagers on a porn site and their limits have been underlined by many.

What would be the "best" alternative to these holders to obtain the most out of the V800 with ease of use?

List of options seen around the web:

• original holders: they create some sort of “color aberrations” noted by filmscanner.info;
• epson holders without the plastic ANR: problem with flatness (notably medium format?)
• “dry” scanning with the fluid mount accessory and ANR glass on top: Newton ring problem?
• Betterscanning holders with T-locks: out of business? (best solution?)
• Digitaliza: some say it scratches the negatives (but sounds good with appropriate shims);
• negative on glass + ANR glass on top: you loose the advantages of the high res lens;
• sandwich the negative between two ANR glass with shims: best solution?
• wet scanning… At that point, I would pay for drum scan!
• other solutions that I have missed?

I now surrender to the collective knowledge…

Thanks in advance to all your inputs.

Papineau

Click to expand...

I have a V850 and the medium format holders are worse than the ones for my earlier V600. You could remove the ANR glass for less dust. I haven't tried that and just put up with the fact that there's more dust. I remove the spots the first thing after the scan. You only have to do it once forever. Well, for each shot. You might try the V600 holders. You can order them from one of Epson's parts suppliers pretty cheaply. These holders don't have height adjustments like the new V850s. SO you'd have to play around a little. But they hold three 6x7s, unlike the new V850 holders that only hold 2 1/2.
https://compassmicro.com/film-holder-assy-brownie-for-epson-perfection-v600-photo.html

i've owned a V600 since 2010 and use it regularly. It's now old and slow (like its owner) but still produces the image quality I want. Sharp enough and pretty good mid-tones, which are whats I look for. It may be worth noting that I almost never make prints but post on a private web site for my few remaining publisher clients.

In my time I've tried all the other Epson scanners. The V800 was the worst for my needs. I couldn't get the two I used (owned by friends who paid big money for them here in Australia to give me anything as sharp as my own V600 would give. They calibrated everything and bought all the generic brand film holders and glass but no good. Results overall, even with good contrast B&W negatives from my Rollei TLR Zeiss lenses, were unsharp.

In the end I discovered something that has worked well for me since and so may be worth considering. When I process films, I put them in archival pages and then flatten them under several big books for a few days. All my negatives are then perfectly flat and scan ideally for me without much fuss or bother.

This may not work for everyone, but for my scanning needs and wants, sometimes KISS in the best way...

ozmoose said:

i've owned a V600 since 2010 and use it regularly. It's now old and slow (like its owner) but still produces the image quality I want. Sharp enough and pretty good mid-tones, which are whats I look for. It may be worth noting that I almost never make prints but post on a private web site for my few remaining publisher clients.

In my time I've tried all the other Epson scanners. The V800 was the worst for my needs. I couldn't get the two I used (owned by friends who paid big money for them here in Australia to give me anything as sharp as my own V600 would give. They calibrated everything and bought all the generic brand film holders and glass but no good. Results overall, even with good contrast B&W negatives from my Rollei TLR Zeiss lenses, were unsharp.

In the end I discovered something that has worked well for me since and so may be worth considering. When I process films, I put them in archival pages and then flatten them under several big books for a few days. All my negatives are then perfectly flat and scan ideally for me without much fuss or bother.

This may not work for everyone, but for my scanning needs and wants, sometimes KISS in the best way...

Click to expand...

My v850 is better than my V600.

1. Is it possible you were not sharpening the scans with the V850 but were sharpening them for the scan with the V600?
2. Were the film holders height adjusted for maximum sharpness on the V850? You have to do that? V600 holders are not adjustable.
3. What film were you scanning?

Good questions, Alan.

I have the v800. I have not noticed the color fringing reported by others. I have the v700 holders, but for most work, I prefer the v800 holders, with one exception-- the medium format holders are a right royal pain to get the negative lined up perfectly in the holder, and even then, some film stocks that are slightly wider than others, will get pinched.

My personal belief is that people are moving their Epson scanners around without the transport locks engaged-- Mine has never moved so much as an inch without the locks engaged, and my focus for the "high res" sensor is exactly 3mm (default height) based on my testing.

I typically scan with no corrections in SilverFast other than Negafix, and histogram adjustments, and I do mild post-sharpening in Affinity via the "frequency separation" filter, which does a nice job of sharpening details, but not film grain.

I don't claim these are "great" photos, but for a small selection of scanned images, you can look here.

Oh-- a youtube poster by the name of Nick Carver did an evaluation of the various scanning options on his v700, with the title of "Comparing 5 Epson Film Scanning Techniques". His conclusion was that the betterscanning wetmount was best, and the v850 tray was second, beating out the v700 tray.

John: Those are very nice.

Thank you.

grat said:

Thank you.

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Hi Everyone, Grat mentioned in his post, Feb 26, 2022 Nick Carvers youtube review of scanning options and the mention of BetterScanning.com equipment being using Wer Mount Holders are the best. I have tried to order from them on there website and it says they will respond in 24-48 hrs with payment instructions. I have not heard from them and have send additional emails with no response. Does anyone have any knowledge if they are still in business or how to contact them other then email. The website is still active so...?? Thanks for any help or information.

I only use my v850 Pro for scanning sheet film and misc larger film formats that clients bring in that I can’t easily run through my camera/copy stand setup. I always just scan on the platen glass, emulsion down, with a large sheet of ANR glass on top. I use Vuescan and scan in 16 bit and save in 16 bit raw, then run it through my simple image tools software.

I always scan at the native 4800 dpi, but if doing color, often have to have Vuescan do it’s internal pixel reduction to get the file size down to something that will fit into a tiff file (4GB is the limit) with color materials, and even then the resulting file is often way larger than the client wants/needs, so for the larger materials, for simplicities sake, I don’t bother with the film holders. For roll film and 35mm, I use my camera/copy stand setup, which blows the doors off the v850 for 35mm and is an easy equal for 120.

Adrian Bacon said:

I only use my v850 Pro for scanning sheet film and misc larger film formats that clients bring in that I can’t easily run through my camera/copy stand setup. I always just scan on the platen glass, emulsion down, with a large sheet of ANR glass on top. I use Vuescan and scan in 16 bit and save in 16 bit raw, then run it through my simple image tools software.

I always scan at the native 4800 dpi, but if doing color, often have to have Vuescan do it’s internal pixel reduction to get the file size down to something that will fit into a tiff file (4GB is the limit) with color materials, and even then the resulting file is often way larger than the client wants/needs, so for the larger materials, for simplicities sake, I don’t bother with the film holders. For roll film and 35mm, I use my camera/copy stand setup, which blows the doors off the v850 for 35mm and is an easy equal for 120.

Click to expand...

Thanks Adrian for the response. I shoot mostly B&W 4x5 negatives. I have tried scanning with digital Sony A7Riii on copy stand, 3 shots, stitching in Lightroom then converting using negative lab pro. I did not like results. When I shoot 120 seems to work great. Recently got a v850 for the 4x5 but haven’t used it yet. Just been researching. The better scanning.com wet /dry4x5 holder seemed best but can not get them to respond. Will try your method. Thanks so much.

FilmGuyMF said:

Thanks Adrian for the response. I shoot mostly B&W 4x5 negatives. I have tried scanning with digital Sony A7Riii on copy stand, 3 shots, stitching in Lightroom then converting using negative lab pro. I did not like results. When I shoot 120 seems to work great. Recently got a v850 for the 4x5 but haven’t used it yet. Just been researching. The better scanning.com wet /dry4x5 holder seemed best but can not get them to respond. Will try your method. Thanks so much.

Click to expand...

if you’re only doing BW, if you’re willing to use Vuescan, you can scan monochrome with just the blue channel and get a bit more effective resolution. With 4x5, even scanning at 1200 dpi nets enough resolution to print a 16x20 at 300ppi with no scaling, and 2400 dpi will get you a very respectable 40x50 with minimal scaling. The scanner doesn’t actually resolve 4800 dpi, but the blue channel does do a bit better than 2400 dpi, so it’s worth it to do an initial capture at 4800, then scale it down as part of post processing.